The disclosures make the case for creating what I’ve called “the erasable Internet.” Last year, after the stunning rise of Snapchat, an app that sends pictures and messages that disappear after the recipient receives them, I argued that we were witnessing the birth of a new attitude toward data online.

Snapchat showed that saving everything — the default assumption of digital communication since its birth — wasn’t the only way to navigate the digital world. “Erasing all the digital effluvia generated by our phones and computers can be just as popular a concept as saving it,” I argued — and if we moved toward that model, the Internet might be a more private, and less dangerous and damaging place.